webwiz — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 19:51:00 +0000

Just a suggestion - If my use of the Whois service is correct, I traced your host to http://mister.net/. If so, they have a control panel with a file manager. You could use it to copy the old file to your computer, make the changes, then go back to the control panel to upload the new page.

If I am mistaken, try logging in to your host to see if they do have a control panel like this.

greg — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 14:04:42 +0000

You still need to know the basics though, as even with a site already made, like you have, you might want to change it a bit, so rather than struggle and shift items around with the code you already have, you could decide to change it a bit with the code you have learned.

http://www.tizag.com/htmlT/ and w3schools.com/html/default.asp
both excellent sites to start of with
The links on the left of both sites pages are the categories for HTML. If you go to their homepages there is also tutorials for PHP, CSS, Javascript etc.
But you should start with HTML and CSS and understand the basics of those before even looking at PHP or anything else.

In my opinion, you should go to one of those sites and just go through from page one to the end of the HTML tutorial.
Most of it is very simple stuff, and you will pick up a lot in a day.
Tizag is sometimes a little better explained, but w3schools often has a link at the bottom of each pages tutorial where you can edit the HTML to what you just learned and play with it a bit

If you do decide to go through one of those tutorials, my advice is forget the layout a "little" bit, and concentrate on learning the tags, like is bold, link text is a link etc
Once you have a good grasp of how to control the elements on a page, like the text, links and divs etc, then move onto CSS and learn how to nicely align around the page what you just learned in HTML.

Have a test page that you can upload to your server. That is very useful as when you don't fully understand something or want to experiment with it, you can copy and paste the code from the tutorial into the test page, edit what you want and upload to your server to see the results.

If you go from start to finish in one of those site's tutorials you will be suprised to what you learn in 3-4 days. Then you may be in a position to play with your site a little, copy all the files from your site to a test site or test folder on that site and you can edit anything you want without changing the real site.

Then when you can play with the basics, and get stuck with how to do a 'specific' thing, you can ask in here
Because of course asking in here "how do I make or change a website" is impossible to answer here, we will be writing a tutorial that is already done on the net.

Again, personally I think tizag is a little better all round, but both are good and have different strengths.

But of course ask away if you are stuck with anything
Good luck

Aiden — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 06:22:01 +0000

Thanks! I've been checking out a few tutorials, and I seem to understand the principles, if not the details yet. I think you are right: its going to be very hard to figure out the current website since I didn't do it. I think that my former webmaster should have offered to help me set up some sort of alternative instead of just bailing out. It is a great site, but I think it is much too complicated for what I needed.

"B) its for a purpose - you only need to learn the things that you require for your particular site, learning things you will never use is possibly pointless"

This is so true! That's what I'm running into, especially with books is that they contain reams of information that I don't need right now. I may just print out one of the more concise web tutorials and go through them step by step.

greg — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 09:40:34 +0000

Aiden;224949 wrote: How hard is it to update a site?

what is the site written in? PHP, HTML, CSS all three? any Javascript?
and then the main question is-
whatever it is written in can you understand that code?
If no then it will be very difficult to update is as you don't know what you are doing.
and learning to make a website. although the basics are easy, it totally depends on how quickly you learn things and how well you remember once you have learnt.
how much time you have etc etc

your webmaster probably could update easily as he wrote it and knows how it works and where everything is.
sites can be made in various different ways, and his way of doing one thing might be a different way to how you would do it or how a certain tutorial you read explains how to do it

Not wanting to put you off though. and once you know 'the basics', seeing the various different methods to do the same thing will become easier to understand. and you should then be able to see how your webmaster designed and made your site
by the basics I mean how to align things around a page correctly, how to use colours and set sizes and manipulate the simple things like bold, italic, image positioning, divs and a little css for spacing and alignment

saying you can drive a car, so therefore you can race competitively in the F1 or indycar competitions is not correct
you can get from A to B. stop at traffic lights, handle roundabouts and get yourself to work and back perfectly well.
but that ability is a totally different level to what skills and knowledge you need to race in professional car racing such as F1

and website making is very similar.
you can make a simple webpage with a little text, few images and a couple of colours, or a huge site with millions of members, hundreds of pages, catalogues, purchases/sales, fancy images and layout etc etc and all the possibilities inbetween.

So it depends on what you want to learn. and what you want to learn depends on :
A) is it a hobby - any level is good to learn as it's all good fun and interesting so there are no limits

B) its for a purpose - you only need to learn the things that you require for your particular site, learning things you will never use is possibly pointless

as for how to advice what you should do and what you need to learn,
I don't know what you already know about web code (HTML, CSS, PHP JAVASCRIPT)
the best method is to get to a position where you can successfully upload a test page to your live website
edit the test page on your PC and then upload it again to overwrite the old one to make the changes happen on the site
then you can play around with the code in that test page
changing one thing at a time re-uploading and seeing what it does when on the internet

read a few tutorials like tizag.com and w3schools.com and when you don't follow something you can try it our in your test page

the alternative is for someone to write a control panel for your site
where all the text areas, images and colours can be changed with a click of a button
I can make control panels for you site as can many others here, although as it's a very involved job I doubt you will get someone to do it for free. if you do be wary of them, their abilities and their true intentions.
but of course, while this will allow you to edit your site easily and without having to learn anything, it wont give you any control over your site layout or the ability to understand how your site work to solve a problem if one arises or to re-design it to look how you want.

I'm gonna stop now. I didn't realise I'd written so much

Aiden — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 22:52:41 +0000

Leananshee;224803 wrote: Some good things to keep in mind:

1. Any pages you edit, edit them offline. Then upload them to your server.

2. Always keep multiple copies of your content, properly organized by website version, usually labelled by date.

3. Make sure the site structure stays logical. default.html or index.html is usually the homepage, and stands alone. Your other pages have their own folder, graphics, scripts, css the same.

4. And always live test your updates, to make sure everything still works like you want it to.

The biggest problem a site owner encounters when taking over a site is maintaining that order, which is crucial to its continued success.

Thanks for the tips! I've been talking to other ezine owners and discovered that most of them give access to the site to all of their staff. I think one of my mistakes was to leave the site and updating solely in the hands of my webmaster. Originally he had agreed to let me observe him going through the update process just to give me some idea of it, but then he always fudged out on doing so. I should have insisted....
How hard is it to update a site? Initially my webmaster told me that once our site was up, updating would be "a snap". But with each update, it would be a long drawn out process where he would have a succession of problems and I have since wondered if he were simply A) lazy; or B) wasn't as competent as he claimed.

Aiden — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 22:46:06 +0000

PopeCuervoLime;224797 wrote: Hey there,

Learning HTML and CSS is very easy; I am self-taught and find HTML and CSS one of the easiest computer languages to learn. Like the guy above me said, you can google around to find tutorials on things.

If I may point you in a direction I would recommend the following two sites:

1. http://www.htmlgoodies.com/

2. http://www.htmldog.com/

And to know how far you can expand your skills I recommend taking a look at these sites:

1. http://www.csszengarden.com/

2. http://www.alistapart.com/

And as for finding a free, easy, and secure FTP client you can always get the FireFox browser and download the FireFTP add on: fireftp.mozdev.org/. When you access it from the Tools menu it'll open the FTP window in a new tab, you enter in your logon info and you can just drag and drop files from your computer to the server.

Does this help?

Hey thanks! I just bookmarked everything! htmldog looks fabulous!

Aiden — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 22:43:29 +0000

ap1106;224787 wrote: smartFTP is a very good ftp program & has no 30 day trials or anything, just completely freeee

i'm completely self taught through just messing around... its not to hard to pick up basic stuff, a quick google search for "how to make a website" or sumthin will no doubt bring up a load of tutorial sites

Tizag.com is pretty good, click here

Thanks! I uploaded smartftp, and the tutorials for it seem very cool.

Leananshee — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 00:47:44 +0000

Some good things to keep in mind:

1. Any pages you edit, edit them offline. Then upload them to your server.

2. Always keep multiple copies of your content, properly organized by website version, usually labelled by date.

3. Make sure the site structure stays logical. default.html or index.html is usually the homepage, and stands alone. Your other pages have their own folder, graphics, scripts, css the same.

4. And always live test your updates, to make sure everything still works like you want it to.

The biggest problem a site owner encounters when taking over a site is maintaining that order, which is crucial to its continued success.

PopeCuervoLime — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 19:16:12 +0000

Hey there,

Learning HTML and CSS is very easy; I am self-taught and find HTML and CSS one of the easiest computer languages to learn. Like the guy above me said, you can google around to find tutorials on things.

If I may point you in a direction I would recommend the following two sites:

1. http://www.htmlgoodies.com/

2. http://www.htmldog.com/

And to know how far you can expand your skills I recommend taking a look at these sites:

1. http://www.csszengarden.com/

2. http://www.alistapart.com/

And as for finding a free, easy, and secure FTP client you can always get the FireFox browser and download the FireFTP add on: fireftp.mozdev.org/. When you access it from the Tools menu it'll open the FTP window in a new tab, you enter in your logon info and you can just drag and drop files from your computer to the server.

Does this help?

ap1106 — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 17:03:03 +0000

smartFTP is a very good ftp program & has no 30 day trials or anything, just completely freeee

i'm completely self taught through just messing around... its not to hard to pick up basic stuff, a quick google search for "how to make a website" or sumthin will no doubt bring up a load of tutorial sites

Tizag.com is pretty good, click here